Now I don't want to get off on a rant here...

(Customer Service)

The sign reads in large letters “EXCHANGES and RETURNS =>” across the top, with tiny letters and in parenthesis on the bottom “(Customer Service)”; this about sums it all up for me. If it’s a service to the customers, which is fairly important for a store that sells things to service customers and your department to handle any issues is parenthetical at best in dealing with these issues. Then I suppose you shouldn’t expect much.

I have been fairly unimpressed as of lately with several companies (Customer Service) skills. We have been rather unsuccessful at achieving a balanced exchange with these companies. By balanced exchange, I mean where customer A sees something of value at store B and exchanges the hard earned income of customer A in an amount that is equal to the value of the widget assigned by store B where both are satisfied.

Three stores have led me to wonder if everyone has a (Customer Service) sign like this. One has the same name as a popular movie theatre, but sells hardware like Home Depot and not entertainment like the popular movie theatre. The next one is a trader of records and tapes. Finally we have a store that exports furniture from Sweden.

A door was ordered from the movie theatre named place in November. Several (Customer Service) mistakes later and here we are almost the end of March and there is still no new door on the house. The traders actually were quite pleasant to deal with, unfortunately this time store B was me and customer A was them. Since they don’t say they trade CD’s in the name of the store, I should have known I was not going to get the value I felt was equal to the CD’s I was selling to them.

Finally, I have figured out why the US exports outnumber the US imports. Companies that export furniture from Sweden to the US have zero control over their inventory, so they never know what piece of furniture is where or even how many they actually have. You will have to discuss this with 5 different employees to determine that though. They can give you a price on their website, which the store does not have to honor. When you ask to speak with a manager about this, he won’t actually speak to you. He will however stand over your shoulder and highlight the words on their website that gives them the legal right to not honor the price listed on their website and then stare at you blankly. The best part of that is you can't actually buy the item from their website. (Customer Service) is great.

The moral of this story is that I am now determined to become a carpenter or at the very least Macgyver. Do you think Macgyver ever had to deal with these types of (Customer Service) issues?! NO WAY!!!! He would just make a door out of his old and used CD’s, fused together by one stick of gum and of course a magnesium torch he made by breaking his bike. Then he would have flown to Sweden himself and smuggled the furniture back piece by piece in film canisters, along with the grandfather of that poor girl he met at the docks yesterday.

Macgyver is the bomb! Lowe's, Record & Tape Traders & Ikea are not!

Posted by price at March 23, 2005 09:43 AM